Craig Thomler's professional blog - eGovernment and Gov 2.0 thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Craig Thomler

I've worked in the online sector since 1995 in roles including founder, publisher, journalist, webmaster, marketer, channel manager, CIO, COO and visionary. I left the public sector in early 2012 to lead Delib Australia as Managing Director Australia and New Zealand. More...

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

In a first for a major political party in Australia, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has embedded blogging, tweeting and video in the heart of its website, relaunching www.alp.org.au as a Politics 2.0 website.

We know we won’t always agree about issues and it would be pretty boring if we did. Labor Connect will not always be endorsed policy and its aim is to create debate and discussion about progressive policy development in the Party.

The ALP calls its relaunched site a 'beta' and says there are many additional social media features yet to release. Their comment moderation process is very simple, with four basic guidelines:

Stick to the topic

Be respectful

Be honest

No Junk Mail

Nielsen recently reported that 9.9 million Australians were active on social media sites and that they used social media for longer than any other nation they studies, with the average Australian spending 6 hours and 52 minutes per month on social media sites.

Besides the site's value in an election year, perhaps it is also an example of what the government is looking for from the public service in departmental engagement.

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